


Our Cold Stars

by theragingstorm



Category: Frozen (2013), The Fault in Our Stars - John Green
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gen, Oneshot, Sibling Love, even though it will definitely break my heart if i do, first chapter, may continue this, platonic, tfios au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 22:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3626250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theragingstorm/pseuds/theragingstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elsa Winters, a terminal cancer patient, has just about given up on her life before she reunites with her long-lost sister Anna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Cold Stars

**Author's Note:**

> This was the idea of my lovely Tumblr mutual @makingtodayaperfectday, but I've been thinking about it a lot. I'm still not sure if I'll continue it or not, but if anyone else wants to do it for me, you're welcome to.  
> Also, to keep things simple, in this Elsa and Anna are fraternal twins.

The day that I reunited with my sister, my uncle Kai had decided that I was depressed. This was mostly because I didn't eat very much, spent a lot of the day in bed, read the same book over and over, and devoted quite a bit of my free time to thinking about death.

Most cancer booklets and websites and things will tell you that depression is a side effect of the disease. That's not actually true. Depression is a side effect of dying.

My name is Elsa Idina Winters, and yes, I'm a terminal cancer patient. Thyroid, to be precise, with a met colony in my lungs. It got so bad that to this day I can't even breathe without a set of oxygen tanks and a little tube for my nose called a cannula. The only reason I'm still alive right now to tell you this is because of a new drug and a lot of luck. Luck that I was pretty sure was redundant; because I was still terminal. I was still dying.

Death has been lurking around my family since even before I was diagnosed, so maybe I just supposed that my short little life wasn't going to matter anyway. Looking at it like that...okay, yeah, I was depressed. I'll just be honest. Anna always told me to be honest.

So anyway, it was a regular Saturday, the kind that you always overlook. My aunt Gerda was in the kitchen making lunch, Kai was hovering over my shoulder, and I was sitting in a kind of deflated way on the couch watching _Rent_ for the millionth time. Kai had gotten this idea into his head that he could somehow persuade me to get up and get out of the apartment if he nagged me enough.

"Come _on,_ Elsa," he insisted. "Just go to Support Group, already."

I turned the volume up on the TV. But Kai refused to give in.

"One of the symptoms of depression is a disinterest in regular activities."

"I would hardly call Support Group an activity," I snarked.

"Well, what do you call watching TV? You must've memorized that movie by now."

"It has Idina Menzel!"

"It's a passivity. Elsa, we just want you to do normal young-woman activities, not lie around all day."

"Cancer support group is _not_ what most young women do on Saturdays," I replied, which to me was a sound argument. "If you want me to act normal, buy me a fake ID so I can drink vodka and do pot."

Kai rolled his eyes. "You don't even _do_ pot."

"See, that's what you'd know if you'd let me have a fake ID."

"You're going to Support Group," he decided for me.

"Oh come on!"

Gerda chose that moment to come in from the kitchen. "Elsa, you deserve a life."

I didn't have any arguments for that. There are very few things more guilt-tripping than when your family tells you, a cancer kid, that they deserve a life.

So I paused my movie for later, got out of my pajamas into actual clothing, and got into the car with Kai to the church where we have Support Group. The ride itself through the heat of midsummer Manhattan was as silent as ever; and when we arrived, I gave his usual offer to walk me in my usual refusal.

I walked down the stairs into the church basement lugging my oxygen tanks behind me. Almost everyone else had already arrived, and they all looked about as excited for the next hour as I felt about it.

See, Support Group happened every Saturday, and it involved a rotating cast of kids aged twelve to eighteen. We were all supposed to discuss our feelings, stories, and our hopes and fears about our disease, like any of us wanted to do that, and it was led by a huge and extremely chipper Norwegian guy called Oaken (nobody knew his last name or where he'd had cancer, mostly because we were all too scared to ask).

It was rotating because it was an accepted part of our short lives that they were, in fact, short. That didn't make it any harder seeing them go: Tadashi, Sitka, Meg, Ray, Adam...there had been a lot of them at that point.

My friend Kristoff was really the only upside to it. At the time, he only had one eye because of cancer in his retinas, and was due to lose the other during surgery. But he and I tolerated that hour every Saturday together, and made sarcastic comments about it afterward.

That day, Kristoff was uncharacteristically lounging back in his cheap plastic chair, all muscles and shaggy blond hair, with a secretive kind of smirk on his face. Everyone else's attention had been on him, but switched to me when I walked in.

"Yoo-hoo, Elsa!" Oaken called cheerfully. "I am sorry, but you are late. And you have missed what Kristoff has just said. Could you repeat it to her, _ja?"_

"Sure." Kristoff sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He turned to face me, and his smirk grew wider. "I was just saying that my friend from L.A.'s coming to stay in New York for a while, and she's visiting us today."

"She has cancer?" I asked.

"Had. She's in remission."

A few other kids nodded to emphasize his point.

"When's she going to get here?"

"She actually should've _been_ here by now..."

As he said it, there was a faint noise on the stairwell that kept growing louder. It sounded like one regular _thump_ accompanied by a harder and more metallic _thump._ Then a girl ran triumphantly down the stairs into the basement and tackle-hugged Kristoff so hard he nearly fell out of his seat.

All I could see of her at first was her strawberry-blond braids and the prosthetic leg that extended under her cutoff shorts and from one freckled leg. Then she turned around.

It took me a moment to realize. But when I did, I gasped out loud and clapped both hands over my mouth.

She'd obviously changed since we were little girls, but enough of her -- huge blue-green eyes, a little curved nose like mine, round cheekbones scattered with freckles, beaming smile -- remained for me to recognize my sister.

"Yoo-hoo!" Oaken said to her encouragingly. "Please have a seat, Miss...?"

"Winters. Anna Kristen Winters." She untangled her arms from around Kristoff's neck, and sat down next to him. I made a mental note to strangle my friend later for not telling me about her.

But, I thought, maybe it was better that she didn't know it was me. She looked so grown up and full of life, and as for me...

I looked down at myself. I was wearing jeans that had faded beyond saving, the _Wicked_ t-shirt from when I'd gone to see it for the first time, and sneakers that I'd doodled on with Sharpies in a moment of boredom. My skin was vampire-pale from all the time I spent indoors, and my almost-white blond hair was -- and still is -- very short, thanks to the chemotherapy I'd gone through.

Anna leaned back lazily and finished her introduction. "I'm seventeen years old, and had osteosarcoma a couple years ago. Today however, I'm completely NEC."

Osteosarcoma...that explained the missing leg. (NEC -- no evidence of cancer.)

"And Anna dear, would you like to share your fears with the group?"

She didn't even hesitate. "Oblivion."

This caused a stir of murmurs.

"I'm afraid of being forgotten, of not mattering to anyone. I fear it like...the proverbial blind man fears the dark."

"Too soon," Kristoff said, grinning at her.

"Was that insensitive?" She grinned back. "Sorry about that."

I'm still not sure what came over me in that moment. But hearing her talk, I stood up so quickly I almost kicked over my oxygen tank.

"Elsa!" Oaken exclaimed. I had never volunteered my opinions in Support Group before. "What would you like to say to Miss Anna?"

Anna turned to look me in the eye for the first time. Her mouth fell open, and I knew that she'd recognized me.

Too late to back out. I adjusted my cannula and cleared my throat.

"You say you fear oblivion," I said loudly. "You say you're afraid of being forgotten. But think about it: oblivion is inevitable. Someday, the world as we know it will no longer exist, whether it's tomorrow, a thousand years, or ten million years away. I don't know when it will happen, but it will, and the earth will be gone. No one will be left to remember Cleopatra or Aristotle, let alone you or me or any of us. Everything we built, and all this--" I swept my hand in an expansive gesture "--will be all for naught. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I advise you to ignore it. God knows that's what everyone else does."

I'd learned this from Hans Westergard, reclusive author of _An Imperial Affliction._ He was, at the time, the closest thing I had to a best friend; and his book was the closest thing I'd had to a Bible. He seemed to understand death in a way that no other living person did, and I wished every day that he didn't live in Denmark.

Everybody was giving me really weird stares when I sat down again. As for me, my cheeks felt like they were on fire and I was beginning to wish that I hadn't said anything. The I realized that Anna was still looking at me, and she didn't look angry or hurt. Actually, her smile got gotten even wider, into a genuine goofy one that stretched across her whole face.

"Goddamn," she murmured. "Sis, you certainly are something else."

Neither of us said anything else for the rest of Support Group. When it was over, she stayed behind to chat more extensively with the other kids there. I started walking back up the stairs, and Kristoff had the nerve to join me.

"What the actual _hell,_ " I hissed at him as we headed out of the church. "You knew my sister all along, and you never thought to tell _either_ of us!?"

"Okay, in my defense, I didn't guess that she was your sister until _after_ she announced that she was coming to New York. And then I wanted to surprise you two."

I could actually kind of see his point. But that didn't stop me from elbowing him.

"Ow! Okay, so unfortunately you can't torture me anymore, because Mom wants me to get home to cook dinner."

I almost made a comment about if he could find the cupboard, but decided not to. Just because Anna was so cavalier about our shared disease didn't mean that I was.

Instead, I said, "Hope your surgery goes okay." Which was about the lamest thing I could've said.

"Yeah, me too." Kristoff climbed into the driver's seat of his truck, and was about to turn the key when he paused and looked at me. "Hey, uh...how come you lost contact with Anna? She never said."

"Oh, nothing too scandalous." I tried to sound offhanded. "After Mom and Dad died, I got taken in by Kai and Gerda, and she got taken in by our other aunt and uncle, Primrose and Frederick. They live on the other side of the country, and we were only five at the time. So, for two little kids, I guess it was just easier to lose contact."

"Oh." Kristoff looked awkward. "I didn't know."

"It's not your fault. Now go home and help your mother."

He nodded to me and drove away. I stood in the parking lot, and was still there waiting for Kai to pick me up when Anna ran up, her prosthetic leg clunking on the asphalt.

"Kristoff! Kristoff, you bastard, why didn't you tell me -- oh." She noticed me then.

I turned. "Anna. Hi."

She started. "Hi -- hi me? Oh. Hi. Hey, has Kristoff left yet?"

"Yeah."

"Damn." With her non-prosthetic leg, she kicked a pebble. "I was gonna kill him for not telling me about you. I've been wishing for a long time for a chance to get to know my sister again."

"Well, he _did_ want to surprise us," I explained. "And I understand if you don't want to know me anymore."

"Why would I not want to?"

"Well..." I faltered. "Besides my speech back there, there's nothing really appealing about me."

Anna gaped like I'd said something really stupid. "Girl, are you serious? Last time I saw you we were five and you were painting your face with mud. Now you're like...Natalie Dormer. But with shorter hair."

"Who?"

"You know... _The Tudors? Mockingjay?_ "

I shook my head. "I've only seen the first two _Hunger Games_ movies."

"Well then, you should totally see it."

Kai had just pulled up into a parking space and was waving to me.

"Okay," I replied absently. "Maybe I'll rent it on iTunes sometime."

"No," Anna said adamantly. "I mean now. See it now with me."

I turned and gaped at her. She may have been my sister, but let's get real here. I didn't even know her.

"How do I know you're not an ax murderer or something?"

"You don't." She shrugged. "So? What do you say?"

I sighed deeply.

"I have got to be out of my mind," I muttered to myself. Out loud, I said, "Okay."

Anna looked delighted. "Great! I'll go wait over by my car." She gestured to a green Volkswagen Beetle, and headed over to it.

I explained the situation to Kai, who was all for it for two reasons: first of all, because I was reuniting with my long-lost sister, and second of all because this was the first time in three months that I was willingly doing anything social.

So I climbed into the shotgun seat of Anna's car. She nodded a little absently to me, before digging a pack of cigarettes out of her purse.

"Oh my God."

She looked puzzled, lifting a cigarette out of the packet. "What?"

"You have _got_ to be kidding me." I pointed to the cigarette in her hand. "You already HAD cancer, and yet you're _paying_ a company to feed your addiction to something that will give you MORE cancer. Why, Anna, _why?"_

Her puzzled expression broke, and she burst out laughing.

"It's not funny!"

"Elsa, I don't light it."

"Huh?"

"It's a metaphor." Anna stuck the cigarette in her mouth, but sure enough, she didn't light it. "You put the killing thing between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do any killing. See?"

"So..." I wanted to be sure I was getting this right. "You choose your behaviors based on their metaphorical resonances."

"Oh yes." She started the car. "I'm a big believer in metaphor."

"As your older sister, I'm a little bit worried about that."

She laughed again, and was still laughing as we drove off.

 

\--Fin?--


End file.
